


Discards 2 - Saving Time

by pollybywater



Category: Highlander: The Series, The Sentinel
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-07
Updated: 2008-12-07
Packaged: 2017-10-17 21:43:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/181461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pollybywater/pseuds/pollybywater





	Discards 2 - Saving Time

  
This story is rather dark in spots and includes mention of past rape and murder, contains angst, sex and schmoop, and should be considered for mature audiences only, plz. Once again, **death story**.

*

Jim Ellison was dying. It was about time, he thought - he was pushing seventy and he'd been looking forward to death since the day he'd let Blair leave him thirty years ago. He'd felt Blair die, felt Blair’s spirit get torn out of his by the roots. He’d almost dropped dead from the pain and spent a fair share of his time since wishing he had.

Sheer cussedness pushed Jim through his life until the habit of living once again took over. He'd endured his subsequent decades like a man serving a life sentence, owing a penance he could never repay. To do any less would dishonor what Blair had taught him and that Jim could not do. He’d done enough.

He survived. He waited.

Now he was dying of pneumonia, which Jim found morbidly ironic when he remembered how sick Blair had been after dying in the fountain. All the modern medicine in the world wasn't fixing Jim and he didn't care; he was beyond ready to shuffle off his mortal coil, although he regretted his death was going to upset Daryl, a little sorry his friend showed up but aware the hospital staff would have called him in. Daryl Banks was as close as Jim got to local next-of-kin these days; he was Uncle Jim to Daryl's kids and grandkids and tried his best to be there for them on Simon's behalf. Simon had died a good twenty years ago from a massive heart attack. Jim still missed him, too.

"Y'look tired, old man," he said, lifting the corner of his oxygen mask so Daryl could hear him. He'd been calling Daryl old since Daryl hit fifty just to get Daryl's goat.

"I am tired. It's three o'clock in the damned morning."

"Sorry to put you out," Jim said but he was laughing his wheezy old man's laugh, glad to have the chance to tease his friend once again. Daryl sounded so much like his father. Jim ended up choking, coughing for long minutes while Daryl helped him raise his head and wear his oxygen mask. "...it's time, Simon," he said when he could speak.

"I know, Jim."

"I saw Blair last week at the airport in Seacover. He doesn't know I know it was him, though."

Daryl was silent for a long moment. Jim could tell Daryl thought he was delusional, rambling, out of his head, and hoped the idea would soften his passing. He could see it coming. All the borders were becoming cloudy and blue as the spirit world slowly surrounded his soul. A black jaguar paced along the fringes. He could see it with his eyes closed.

"How did he look?" Daryl asked, indulging him, settling him back on his pillow and taking his hand in warm firm fingers, the last thing Jim felt as he turned to walk West.

"Beautiful. He was always so beautiful. He looked happy. Loved."

"So you can let go now, huh," Daryl concluded under his breath - but Jim's hearing really was the last sense to go and he was dimly pleased that Daryl understood. Blair was okay; Jim could stop keeping this weird vigil over the remainder of his days and lay down his watch.

"Blair's fine," he agreed, the last words that would pass his lips as he stepped into the jungle, meeting Incacha with a hug.

***

John twitched, then squirmed, his sleep unusually restless for the sixth night in a row. Sitting crosslegged on his side of the bed, Methos watched as his husband - his lover, his former student, his precious friend, his Immortal Brother - muttered and reached for something Methos could not see.

Methos very much suspected that something was John's memories from before his first death, his past stirred thanks to a chance meeting last week; John had run into an elderly mortal who'd clearly recognized him and called him by name.

Blair.

Methos had long since been told what information Joe Dawson had gathered about John's pre-immortal life - Methos was not one to enjoy surprises later - but John had declined to be told, stating he was who he was now, who he wanted to be and with whom. He trusted Methos would tell him if he ever needed to be told; Methos thought that time was likely upon them.

John sat bolt upright, gasping awake, his hands covering his face as he burst into sobs, crying as if his heart was breaking and refusing to let Methos see. Undeterred, Methos pulled his husband into his arms, nudging a curly head to rest on his shoulder and trying to stress his absolute acceptance.

"What hurts you so, my love?"

"Jim. Jim's- dying. He's dying, right now. I can- I can feel- he was my sentinel, Methos. God!" John screamed into his palms, impaled by his grief, convulsing like he was taking a quickening. "Jim. No, no, no, no."

Riven by this heartbreaking loss, Methos wracked his memory for what little he knew of the rare pairings. Sentinels. Excubitors. Watchmen. Guardians with their soul-bonded companion, the patronus, the anchor, the guide.

Methos hadn't seen the like in over a thousand years, but he had seen such a bond end once before.

On the battlefield.

"Look at me, John. Look at me, love. Breathe. Breathe. Now. You're Jim's patronus, his protector, his companion, his guide. I understand a little. I do. Breathe, love. You have an animal totem, I presume, yes? Breathe, that's it, my own, my extraordinary Brother. Help your sentinel pass. Ask your animal spirits to take you and escort him, then come back. I will anchor you. I'll be right here, I promise you. I will wait for you."

John's beautiful drenched blue eyes fixed on Methos as John curled over on his side and put his head in Methos' lap. Drying John's face with his palms, Methos murmured his love with each careful stroke, his faith that John could do this, his belief that John had always been special, Methos had known it from the start, he just hadn't understood what it was he was feeling.

"Right here, always."

With a sigh, John's eyelids fluttered closed.

Methos supposed later that he shouldn't have been surprised when part of John's quickening leaked free and gathered above them in a formless ball of brilliant white light, disappearing as John went limp.

***

Jim looked to himself the way he had the first time he'd set foot in this particular jungle, face painted in shadows and light the way Incacha had taught him after taking him into the Chopec. The shaman squeezed Jim warmly, his warm breath tickling the side of Jim's neck before he stepped away, still holding Jim by the forearms.

"Enqueri, I am here to accompany you. As you have waited, I have waited, too, my friend. There is one other who would make this crossing with us."

Incacha turned him, grinning broadly, then stepped out of the way so Jim could watch a great gray wolf bound into the clearing ... followed by Blair, the Blair Jim remembered from their second meeting, the Blair who told him what he was and saved his life for the very first time moments afterward. His Blair, so beautifully and vividly alive.

"Chief."

"Jim. My Jim."

Blair's arms closed around him and Jim drew the first full breath he'd taken in thirty years. He leaned his head on one strong shoulder and said all the words he'd spent decades wishing he'd said.

"I love you. I love you, Blair. I've missed you so much. I'm so sorry I hurt you. I'm sorry I made you leave me. Please forgive me. Please."

Love surged through Jim and washed away that ancient pain ... dissolved it all in emotion pure and bright, hot and adoring, drenched with absolution.

"I forgive you, Jim. I'm sorry, too. I hope you can forgive me. I love you. I always will," Blair promised, pressing kisses into his hair. "My Jim, my sentinel."

Jim began to straighten, started to wipe his face dry - just for comfort; he was unashamed of crying for the first time ever - and jolted to a halt when Blair's hands went to the sides of his head. Blair held him still and licked tears off his jaw, following their wet path up his cheeks with soft kisses, Blair's full lips eventually lingering over his own.

"I will always love you, Jim," Blair vowed again, breathing the words into Jim's mouth until he could taste them there like sunshine and clover honey, the sweet flavors of love and forgiveness suffusing his soul.

Believing, Jim let himself be shepherded into the light.

***

All his long millennia, his much vaunted intelligence, his certainty that he'd seen everything, been there, done that, invented cotton cloth ... all mattered not, because Methos had never experienced this. He had not known - he, the Pale Rider, Death incarnate for a thousand years - he had not known how it felt to walk between worlds, between being and nothingness, between flesh and spirit. He'd had no clue.

John was not only a watchman's companion, he was a shaman. Everything John was he shared with Methos, pouring it on him in splattering drops of quickening energy that soaked through Methos' skin and zapped his nerves with repeated bursts of near-orgasm.

He found himself pushed to his back with a rather wild-eyed John crouched over him on hands and knees, lips peeled back in a rather primal scowl.

Well, now. This was more like it. Tipping his head back, slowly, slowly, Methos bared his throat to his husband, gasping harshly when John's teeth closed on the side of his neck. His body surrendered, he cried out when John drank down quickening sparks and licked blood off his healing skin; the sensation went right to Methos' cock as John bound their souls, knitting over the raw holes left by his watchman's death and the severed bond.

"What if you find another sentinel?" Methos had to voice his only reservation, acknowledging Blair Sandburg's unique talent. The man was a protector of watchmen. As Methos understood it, the position was something of a sacred trust. He could not deny John the opportunity-

"Jim was my sentinel. I will have no other," John informed him, mouth traveling over Methos' adam's apple and perserverating for a time on the soft, sensitive underside of Methos' chin. "I'll have you, won't I, beloved? There's no sacrifice here, believe me. If you'll have me?"

"Forever." It was a peculiar thing, but Methos, the five-thousand year old Immortal, had never believed in 'forever' before John. "I love you, my own."

"'Til the end of the world, beloved."

John put their foreheads together and they passed a time merely breathing shared air before beginning to share kisses. Methos tasted blood and lightning on John's tongue; it made him hard with dizzying speed, made him bite down on the soft flesh in his mouth and growl. Equally as hard against him, John groaned, catching their cocks in his strong, hot grip and pressing them close - Methos' eyes rolled back in his head and he gave a full body shiver, barely holding back his climax, wanting his husband very much.

"I need you in me," he said, hands sliding up John's wonderfully hairy chest to thumb over stiff little nipples, fingers relishing the taut, resilient muscle beneath them and the way John quivered at his lightest touch. "I need you, John."

John pulled away, parting Methos' legs and kneeling between them, hands hot on Methos' thighs sliding down to his buttocks, curling Methos up.

"I need you, too," he said, licking the words warm and wet around the base of Methos' rigid erection. Methos felt his balls draw up and called out, teetering on the brink ... losing it when John's tongue dragged over his anus and speared his willing body, fucking him into coming so hard he had an arhythmia and blacked out.

When Methos came to, John had two fingers buried in his ass, slicking him inside with his own ejaculate and rubbing over his prostate. It felt like he was still coming, hollowed out inside by the intense spasms.

"John, please," he rasped out, tightening his muscles to clench on those teasing, talented fingers. "Please, love."

"Anything. Everything I am," John swore, removing his fingers when Methos permitted and replacing them with his cock; John pushed into Methos and turned him to fire, pleasure burning up his nerves.

***

"John ... what do you remember?"

"All of it, I suppose." John sounded philosophical, lying with his head over Methos' chest. John liked listening to Methos' heart beat, having said so more than once.

"Dying?"

"Which time? No, never mind, scratch that. I ... I'm not gonna dwell on that life. I'm not thinking about what ended it. Maybe I never will. It was ... thirty years ago."

"Shall I learn to call you-"

"That man has been dead for three decades, Methos. I've been John Milton Adams longer than I was ... him. I am who I am. Still your John. Only yours." John didn't add the 'now' but he didn't have to. Methos could feel John's raw sorrow all the way through, recognizing the too-familiar pain of loss.

"Tell me about him sometime?"

"Blair Sandburg?" John asked with a grimace. Turning John beneath him, Methos kissed away the frown.

"No. Tell me about Jim."

"Yeah?"

Hope and relief and love and gratitude shone so brightly in John's eyes, Methos wondered if he'd have to shade his. They were rather unexpectedly stinging, which may have been due to Methos thinking he'd probably had the same look in his own eyes when John didn't turn away from him after learning about Death and the Horsemen. It was a privilege for Methos to return that sense of total acceptance.

"Whatever you want to tell me. Whenever."

"Thank you, beloved." John leaned up and kissed him, before lying back down. "The second time we met, I told him he was a behavioral throwback to a pre-civilized breed of man, he called me a neo-hippie witch doctor punk, then I pushed him under a garbage truck to save his life...

"He was my sentinel." Tears strangled John's words; John fell silent, weeping without a sound.

"I know, love, I know," Methos said and held John while they grieved: John for Jim Ellison, Methos for both John and Blair Sandburg.

***

John wouldn't go to the funeral - he was afraid someone might recognize him, like retirees from the police department, perhaps, which was attention they could do without - but he asked Methos to accompany him to a viewing, arriving long before the funeral and bribing the funeral home staff to give them a few moments to say a last goodbye.

Jim Ellison wore what Methos assumed was his police dress uniform, and while advancing age had sharpened his bone structure and conferred a certain frailty to his mortal form, he still wore the uniform well, several medals on his chest and white-gloved hands crossed decorously over his waist.

"He finally lost all his hair," John said very quietly, a wistful smile on his face as he touched his fingers to the fragile curve of a bald head. "You were a good-looking bastard up to the end anyway, weren't you, Big Guy?"

Pulling it up over his head, John removed from around his neck the Chopec medicine bag he'd prepared - he and Methos had spent years with several indigenous South American tribes and Methos at last understood why - preparing to slide it beneath his Jim's palms, hesitating for some reason Methos couldn't see.

John's smile faded and his lips trembled, then he bit down on it and looked at Methos, his eyes wet.

"Ah. Jim. Has our stone fetishes, his jaguar and my wolf. Inside his gloves."

"That's what he wanted," a voice said from behind them. Methos hadn't even heard anyone come in. A tall, early-middle-aged black mortal man was walking towards them, steps confident and sure. "He told me he saw you in Seacouver, Blair. I thought he was delirious."

John was frozen. Methos had no such reservation - he swung about to stand between John and the unknown, who spread his hands in a gesture of peaceful intent.

"You don't know me, do you," the man asked John over Methos' shoulder.

"It's not that, Daryl," John said slowly, a clutching hand at Methos' low back. "You just, you look so much like your father."

"Hi, I'm Daryl Banks, Chief of Police, City of Cascade," the man said chattily to Methos, giving Methos' hand - which just happened to be inside Methos' coat - a pointed glance, emphasizing the fact his own hands were empty and still in plain sight.

Methos sighed, took his hand off the small automatic in his pocket and matched Bank's display.

"Ben Adams," he said as politely as he could, which under the circumstances, wasn't quite.

"My husband," John added, tone subdued.

"So. Dad said he met an Immortal once - besides you, I mean. He said the guy looked just like him. The Watchers tried to recruit Dad after but he didn't want to leave the PD. Is that why you left, Blair? Because you're Immortal?"

"More or less," John replied, sliding the medicine bag inside Ellison's lapel. He touched the tips of his fingers to Ellison's mouth and whispered a brief goodbye prayer in Runa Simi, the Quechuan language he'd learned - relearned - with Methos in Peru.

When he straightened to face Daryl Banks, his eyes were wet and sad.

"Thank you, Daryl, for following his wishes."

"He was a good friend. So were you. I- I just wish you hadn't let him think you were dead all these years. Losing you ... he never got over losing you." Banks made as if to step towards John. Methos put himself there with his hand back on his weapon, all without benefit of conscious thought. Only John's hand, warm on his shoulder, kept him from drawing. Banks had sense enough to back off anyway. "Hey, I'm sorry, I get it was an Immortal thing and probably unavoidable, but damn, Blair-"

"Blair Sandburg did die, Daryl. He was raped and murdered and left in a drainage ditch along the side of the interstate highway. He died alone, bleeding out from his insides and the knife wounds on his outside, but he drowned before he bled to death. His body was left face down in filthy water, so he drowned over and over again. It was Blair Sandburg's fate, you see. What he- what I deserved..."

"John, stop," Methos begged, unnerved by the colorless tone of his husband's usually musical voice. Forgetting the mortal entirely, he spun around and took John in his arms, relieved when John started weeping only because at least it wasn't a return to the catatonia-like state of shock his John had inhabited when they'd first met. "It wasn't your fault, love. It was never your fault."

"I left Jim. We fought. He said- it doesn't matter what he said. I left. I was leaving town. Hitching. You always hear how dangerous it is to hitch. You'll get picked up by some serial killer. You just don't think ... I didn't mean to leave him forever. I just wanted some time to get over being so mad. So hurt," John explained between sippy gasps of air, his shoulders still shaking despite the grip Methos had on him.

"You didn't deserve what happened to you," Methos insisted, shaking John just a bit. "No one deserves it. It wasn't your fault. The fault lies in your killer, love, not in you. I know this. I know it."

John's arms came round his waist and squeezed, understanding and forgiveness in the same simple act.

"I'm all right. I am. I just wish..." John took a deep breath, then another, before turning in Methos' arms to where Daryl Banks stood beside Jim Ellison, one hand over his face doing little to hide the fact he was crying. "Daryl?"

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Blair, for what you went through. I shouldn't have said- Jim would kick my ass if he knew I upset you like this. He was so glad you looked happy when he saw you at the airport. He said you looked loved. Looks like that to me, too. Your name was just about the last thing he said before he died. He loved you. He wouldn't want you blaming yourself. I had no right."

"He was so traumatized he didn't remember his mortal life before last night," Methos said rather more harshly than he intended. John's hands came to rest over his own and Methos felt him sigh.

"It's okay, Ben. Daryl, man, can we, like, start over?" John asked, stepping out of Methos' grasp, holding his arms open to the other man. "It's good to see you, even under the circumstances. Thank you for being Jim's friend."

Methos considered revising his opinion of the mortal when the man walked into John's embrace.

"Blair. I'm glad you're alive. I missed you."

They hugged each other and Methos tried to keep his hands empty for the short while it took John and Banks to dispense with the manly back-slapping portion and step apart, John moving back to Methos' side.

"Was Jim ... in pain? What happened to him?" John asked Banks hesitantly, his body exquisitely tense as he leaned into Methos, who put a hand on John's shoulder and gave him a gentle squeeze.

"I was with him. He got pneumonia and the doctors couldn't get rid of it. His lungs just filled up. It was pretty quiet in the end, he had a little coughing spell and just ... slowly stopped breathing. He was coherent right up to the last. Like I said, he talked about you. He was glad to see you happy," Banks repeated. Methos hoped John could eventually gain comfort from the words but expected that to take a while. "He went quiet, and he wasn't alone." There was a comfort in that, which Methos well knew. Such a death was to be envied.

"Daryl, what happened to Simon?"

"He had a heart attack, alone, out in his backyard one afternoon. He tried to crawl back in the house but he didn't make it. He laid there all night until Jim went looking for him the next morning when he didn't show up for work. I was at Quantico and couldn't get here until the day after." There were oceans of regrets in the mortal's voice and Methos felt an unhappy sense of kinship with him after hearing the sad little tale.

"I'm sorry to hear that." John shook his head, hand rubbing his eyes. "Damn. So. Daryl. Quantico?" He looked up at me. "I'm sorry, Ben. No wonder you're about to jump out of your skin. I don't think Daryl's going to turn us in. Are you, Daryl?"

"Immortality isn't the first big secret I've ever kept," Banks drawled calmly, nodding at Jim Ellison's mortal remains. "So. Blair. I guess you're just going to vanish again?"

"Kinda goes with the territory, man."

"He left your dissertation with me, along with documentation from half-a-dozen doctors to back up your findings. I'm supposed to take it to Rainier and try to get your PhD awarded posthumously. I promised."

"Shit," John burst out and would have fallen to the floor if Methos hadn't grabbed him. John clutched him gratefully and let out a single wracking sob that shook Methos to his Immortal bones and left him wishing John had never remembered anything about Jim Ellison. This was going to hurt John for a long, long time, the way Kronos and MacLeod still hurt Methos sometimes, and was the last pain Methos wanted his husband to have to bear. Methos was still so afraid that John would be shattered, broken, the way he'd been when Methos found him. Lost.

"John, John, please, love," he found himself begging, stalling out on what to say next. 'It'll be all right' was hardly true although the immediate anguish would lessen given enough time. 'I need you on your feet, thinking' was equally true, because the publicity that would doubtless occur from Banks carrying out Ellison's last wishes was going to seriously fuck up their lives. 'Don't have another psychotic breakdown' was probably closest to what his fear was screaming but those were hardly the words Methos wanted coming out of his mouth.

Banks, seeming oddly blurry, started towards them; Methos growled and warned him off. John took a great shuddering breath, his face in Methos' throat, breathing him in, John's hands on his back patting him gently.

"I'm okay, don't panic," John murmured under his ear.

"I am not panicking. I do not panic," he replied rather more sharply than he intended but when he felt John's lips tighten and curl into an actual smile he couldn't help but smile back, burying it in John's hair.

"Of course not, dear," John said with well-pretended resignation, an eye-roll in his voice.

"Blair, if you tell me not to do it, I won't. I don't like breaking a promise to Jim, but you're still alive and most of it's your intellectual property," Banks remarked quietly, staring at Ellison with a sad expression. "I'm gonna miss him. He kept me from feeling like an orphan after Dad and Mom died - Mom passed sixteen years ago from cancer."

"I'm so sorry, Daryl. Do you happen to know what happened to Naomi?" John asked, once again turning in Methos' arms, but this time staying right there, where he belonged as far as Methos was concerned.

"She was doing relief work in Nepal, I guess it was about ten, twelve years ago, when the Chinese Army rolled in and executed all the foreigners. I'm sorry, Blair."

John sighed again, trembling a little.

"My mother," he explained to Methos under his breath. "I guess she wasn't my biological mother, was she," he went on as if it had just occurred to him, which Methos supposed it had. Poor John hadn't had anything like the time he needed to come to terms with any of this and still the blows kept coming.

"She would have appreciated a martyr's death, though," John went on, a faint note of humor behind the words, impressing Methos with his effortful resilience. "Joel? Henri? Rafe? Rhonda? Jim's brother Stephen?"

"Rafe went back to South Africa and we haven't heard from him in years. Henri's the Sheriff of Chelan county, Rhonda's babysitting great-grandkids, and Joel's running Park Terrace Nursing Home like a third-world country-"

"Joel?" John laughed disbelievingly. "Joel?"

"Believe it. He had a couple of small strokes and his mind isn't quite right. They keep having to take his power chair away from him because he runs over the staff. Stephen died in a car accident a few years ago."

"Man." John shook his head. "I wish- Well. Never mind. I can't ask you to break a promise to Jim, Daryl, but I don't want that material published. It's enough that I know it's what he wanted, isn't it?"

Daryl Banks nodded, eyes thoughtful.

"I guess it is, Blair."

John flinched, barely, but the reaction confirmed for Methos that John didn't like hearing his pre-immortal name. Banks noticed, too, reminding Methos of how well the mortal must have known John before John's first death.

"I haven't been Blair Sandburg for thirty years, Daryl. Call me John, if you can." John looked up at Methos, his eyes dark with grief, but clear, so clear. "John Adams for the last twenty and John, Adam's, from the day we met."

Aware Banks wouldn't get the meaning behind the emphasis John put on the words, Methos felt his throat swell when John's utter faith shone up at him. Kissing the side of John's head lightly, Methos attempted once more to subdue his lingering fears. This could yet go quite badly but John was telling him they'd be together if it did. He got it. John was 'telling' him so loudly John was making their quickenings resonate in harmonics Methos could feel in his bones, attuning them further, strengthening them both.

"Not cracking, beloved," John had the nerve to tease and Methos had to grin.

"We should be going," he pointed out gently, fingers circling John's wrist. "You need more time?"

John cast a last look at Jim Ellison and shook his head.

"I think I've said everything I wanted to say. Thanks for coming with me."

"Where else would I be, my espoused?" Methos pretended long-suffering, pleased when John smiled a bit and slid under one arm.

"Daryl." John pulled a card out of his wallet that he handed Banks. "It's a voicemail thing, leave a message if you ever need me. Us. We'll help however we can, and we have ... a lot of resources."

"Thanks, Bla- Thanks, John. I appreciate that. Thank you, Ben," Banks added as if by rote then his tone suddenly warmed. His eyes were serious when they met Methos'. He put the card in his pocket and reached for Methos' hand, shaking it at last. "I mean it, thanks. He's always needed a keeper, man. I admire your stones."

"Hey!" John protested, but he was almost laughing. "Take care of yourself, Daryl." The two of them hugged again, giving Methos the moment he wanted to step up to Jim Ellison's side and silently promise to take care of their patronus, his word on it.

"Immortals stayed out of Cascade because of him," Methos supplied evenly without looking at either Banks or John. "They won't now, without a Sentinel to subconsciously deter them. Just so you know, Chief Banks."

"Thanks for the warning. Take care of each other."

"Always."

***

Home, which for the last five or six years had been a remote cabin in southern Oregon, fit upon their return like a shoe that had shrunk. Methos and John tried to resume their routines. John was too quiet, which - not to put too fine a point on it - freaked Methos the fuck out, since he remembered when John had been completely mute, but it wasn't that John couldn't speak, he just seemed to have little to say.

This Methos internalized as a personal failure - if John couldn't talk to him, if he were so unapproachable that his own husband couldn't confide - what, then, was he doing wrong? Worrying made Methos grow quiet, too, which didn't help matters since a John who would speak when spoken to turned out to be a chatterbox next to a John who didn't initiate any conversation.

The day after their third night at home, Methos was trying to read an architectural magazine - he'd enjoyed that career and was toying with the idea of doing it again - when John yanked the magazine out of his hands, tossed it into their fireplace, and stuck his face right in Methos' with his hands on his hips.

"I'm not fucking made out of fucking glass! I'm not going to fucking fall apart! I'm sad, and I feel pretty fucking guilty about a lot of fucking shit, but you can stop tiptoing around me, goddamnit! and for godssakes, quit watching me like you think I'm going to decapitate myself if you turn your back."

"Is that how you view my behavior?" Methos asked, trying to remind himself he'd thought John might need to eventually vent.

"I know you're scared. I can feel it," John said, rubbing his own chest. "I can feel it. You don't have to be so scared."

"The last time I saw a companion survive his watchman's death, the companion lost the ability to speak in words and could only communicate in grunts and whimpers. He killed himself shortly after."

"You gloomy old bastard, does this feel like I'm suicidal?" John asked, pushing Methos down on his back lengthwise along the sofa and crawling on top of him. John was hard, wonderfully hard, shimmying his hips over Methos' groin, the sensation marvelous through the loose sweats which was all either of them had on. "You worry too much. I doubt that other companion had someone like you to hold on to, to anchor on.

"I do miss Jim. I'm not going to lie, although it seems stupid, a little, to miss someone you didn't think of once in thirty years. I keep trying to work it out, did I forget everything as a way of punishing us both? I could have let Joe tell me who I was and tried to reclaim Blair Sandburg's life. I didn't want it and I couldn't have stayed with Jim for thirty years as an Immortal anyway but I didn't even try and that bothers me. Why didn't I try? Was it cowardice? I never wanted to remember what led up to my death and having lived a life without you still feels ... unnatural to me. My heart says I've always been with you. I could have left at any time after the first five years, when I wasn't your student any more, but I- I wanted to stay with you. Always. I still do. If I'd remembered before he died ... was I being selfish? Protecting myself? Us? I think maybe I was. I couldn't have given you up. I couldn't have had you both. But it hurts to think of him being unhappy for so long when I didn't have a care in the world-"

"First, it's not stupid. And second, hardly. You're no coward. You had plenty of cares as I recall, love. You grew into your Immortality, learned how to fight, took your first head, and took me on as a husband."

John waved one hand dismissively, snuggling into Methos' arms. Methos welcomed his weight. Physical contact had fallen off between them along with their words, but John seemed resolved to change all that, right here and now.

"I wasn't alone. I was never alone."

"I could have pushed you into ... reclaiming that life," Methos admitted, speaking to his secret concern that John might blame him somehow for keeping John with him. "I should have insisted before we married-"

"You did what I wanted," John said in a tone that disposed of that argument. Methos tried not to weep with relief, so pleased to have John sounding and behaving like himself once more. "I wanted you. Our life. I still do."

"I believe you," Methos said, trying to frame his next remarks. "My ... fears ... have been primarily for your mental state, but I also wonder..."

"If I'll become a different person now that I remember who I was before I met you? A person who might not love you? Need you?" John lifted his head and grinned down at Methos, reminding them both they were still very much alive. "Blair Sandburg would have fallen in love with you, too, Methos."

Methos couldn't catch the smile that crawled over his face and took up residence there; John gasped, his own smile becoming a bit watery.

"'The smiles that win, the tints that glow, But tell of days in goodness spent, a mind at peace with all below, a heart whose love is innocent!' That's the look I keep falling in love with every time I see it."

It was Methos' turn to gasp, moved by John's choice of George Gordon's lovely verse. John was apparently moved to kiss him, John's lush mouth gentle, his moist tongue lazily tasting Methos' bottom lip.

"I love you," Methos said in some language - he wasn't paying attention - knowing John understood him when John smiled against his mouth and knelt up, so beautiful with the light in his eyes.

"I love you, too. Let's go to bed."

"John. I'm shocked. It's barely gone noon."

"Exactly. We've already wasted all morning," John warned before climbing off him.

"So we have," Methos agreed, getting up so he could take his husband's hand and run to the bedroom.

In the interests of saving time, and all that.

End  
7 Dec 08

 _P.S. The 'invented cotton cloth' line is not my own. I read it somewhere but I can't remember who wrote it first, so my use is a tribute, yeah, that's what it is._


End file.
